Jessica Walker and Joseph Atkins bring a touch of cabaret to English Touring Opera in this intimate show, co-produced by Royal & Derngate, captured on film and directed by James Dacre with animation by Thomas Hicks.
‘Reaching out for the meaning of those moments of eternity’: FOUR QUARTETS – West End ★★★★★
This is wonderful. Sometimes a simple short performance can shake, rouse, even change you.
‘Ralph Fiennes delivers a quite mesmeric performance’: FOUR QUARTETS – West End
Translating poetry to the stage can be challenging for both performer and audience, the importance of the language while alive and vivid on the page can feel verbose or intangible, even static, when read aloud.
‘Happens to hit some nicely topical nerves’: GIN CRAZE – Royal & Derngate, Northampton
Hats off to James Dacre’s Royal & Derngate for bravely slapping on brand new musical Gin Craze in the very week Lloyd Webber and four other London shows got abruptly pinged-off by test ’n’ trace (more like trick-or-treat, frankly: isolation blackmail).
As commercial producers yearn for a return to normal, will subsidised theatre play it safe or break the mould?
Some commercial producers, it appears, wanted the old order to be restored and business to proceed as normal, hence the rush to re-open as quickly as it was legally possible to do so back in November after we emerged from the second lockdown.
NEWS: Royal & Derngate announces four new musicals for 2021
Royal & Derngate Northampton has announced that it will premiere a season of original musical theatre as part of its upcoming Made in Northampton 2021 season.
That was the weekend we knew the theatres would go dark
On the weekend of 14 March 2020, following the closure of theatre on Broadway (on 12 March), it became clear that something overwhelming was about to happen to British theatre.
‘Riveting piece of theatre’: THE POPE – Northampton ★★★★
Anthony McCarten has put together a top-notch drama in The Pope which is brought to life by the outstanding performances of gifted character actors, Anton Lesser and Nicholas Woodeson.
NEWS: Nadia Fall’s second season at Theatre Royal Stratford East features 10th anniversary production of Sucker Punch
Theatre Royal Stratford East has announced Nadia Fall’s second season as artistic director to run from autumn 2019 to summer 2020.
NEWS: The Wardrobe Ensemble follows Education in the West End with Pelican Daughters in Edinburgh
After they make their West End debut with the transfer of 1990s-set Education Education Education, award-winning company The Wardrobe Ensemble conclude this summer with a return to the Edinburgh Fringe and their brand-new, contemporary tale The Last of the Pelican Daughters.
‘Extraordinary study of belief’: OUR LADY OF KIBEHO – Northampton
Katori Hall teams up once again with director James Dacre to present the extraordinary Our Lady of Kibeho, a study on belief that is at once universal and deeply personal, while also scrutinising the communal seeds of warfare.
NEWS: Arts Council England funds Royal & Derngate’s three-year musicals programme
Arts Council England announced an investment package of nearly £0.7 million to fund Northampton-based Royal & Derngate’s three year programme to create original musical productions for mid-scale theatres.
NEW: Royal & Derngate announces 2017 Made in Northampton season, 7 premieres
Royal & Derngate’s Artistic Director James Dacre today announced details of Made in Northampton 2017. The 2017 season will include eleven brand new productions, seven world premieres, three major revivals and a site-specific collaboration with Northampton Town Football Club.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES – Touring
What the Dickens? The adaptation of one of Charles Dickens’ most famous works, A Tale of Two Cities, at Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre this week as part of a national tour, has more than a few misfires but finally proves an entertaining melodrama.
THE HERBAL BED Royal – Touring
SHAKESPEARE’S TOWN LAID BEFORE US The year 1613: somewhere offstage old Shakespeare is dying, and in her husband’s physic-garden, competent and dignified, his daughter Susanna assists her middle-aged husband Doctor Hall. She manages her small daughter and the maid … Continue reading →
BRAVE NEW WORLD – Touring
Energy and fidelity to the intriguing source material are not enough to distinguish Brave New World at the King’s, in a touring production marred by odd choices and a curious lack of life.
Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel tells of a world divided by genetic design into castes – Alpha, Beta and so on – and controlled by drugs, recreational sex and facile diversions. Into this world comes ‘John the Savage’, an outsider from a reservation, raised on family, religion and Shakespeare – all of which civilisation has banned.
Theatre Diary: Only Forever, Brave New World and See What I Wanna See
Off-West End, out of town and out of this world. I’ve seen a few shows recently that have left me feeling distinctly disquieted… for their visions of the future, their distortions of the past and potential armageddons. As usual, I’ve listed productions in closing date order, and the first on the list, Only Forever, finishes […]
BRAVE NEW WORLD – Northampton and touring
Hot on the heels of Headlong’s obliquely brilliant treatment of 1984 comes a rival dystopia: Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, eighteen years before Orwell and before the second war: the comparison is fascinating. Orwell saw ordinary people, recognizable but crushed by brutality and surveillance, thoughtcrime punished and history denied by violence. Its science is basic – telescreens, shredded newsprint and photos.
NEWS: Sophie Ward takes gender-swap role in Brave New World adaptation
Touring Consortium Theatre Company and Royal & Derngate Northampton present the world premiere of a brand new stage adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s seminal novel BRAVE NEW WORLD, opening on Friday 4 September 2015, with a national press night in Northampton on Tuesday 8 September.
THE HOOK – Northampton & Liverpool
UNDER THE BRIDGE, MEN UNDER PRESSURE “You gonna have a revolution”: the last words of Arthur Miller’s angry “play for the screen”, echo here with an interrogative lift. But the filmscript was too revolutionary to handle for Elia Kazan and … Continue reading →